The Spectacle of Punishment: Lessons from a Century of Prison Films

Our contemporary media landscape offers a never-ending supply of stories featuring crime, mayhem and punishment. Prison cinema is as popular as ever, allowing us to feel like we've experienced prison without the dangers of actually going there. When we regularly consume these narratives, we come to believe things about the criminal justice system that are not only untrue, but incredibly problematic.

Prisons on television are terrifying spaces full of scary monsters housed alongside occasional good guys seeking redemption. The imbalance is hard to miss; for every outlaw seeking redemption there are a dozen bad guys looking to victimize him. As viewers, we can't help but walk away from such representations feeling as if prisons should be harsher and more restrictive. The Spectacle of Punishment maps this process, revealing why we come to believe what we believe and how those beliefs impact the world.

The prison environment in Hollywood productions is designed to conform to one of three frameworks: prison as a playground, prison as penance, or prison as a paradox. In playground films and television shows, prison is a space where anything goes and where little is disciplined, a situation which allows the bad guys dreamed up by Hollywood to live it up while incarcerated. Prison as penance productions show viewers a dangerous prison environment that works to both redeem those outlaws who are willing to change and contain those who would otherwise unleash their sinister impulses on society if released. Prison as a paradox depicts a correctional space that is not only ineffective at rehabilitating criminals, but also guaranteed to make one's criminality worse. Our demand for a never-ending supply of spectacles of punishment has left us woefully misinformed about the operations of the US prison system, supportive of its permanent expansion, and convinced that prisons and jails are too soft and unrestrictive.